Book Review: Creating Life in the Lab: How New discoveries in Synthetic Biology Make a Case for the Creatorby Rich Deem

Book Review

Synopsis:
An informative book for the technically minded.Summary: Creating Life in the Lab is a contemporary examination of how scientists are attempting to create life in the lab. The book cuts through the sensationalism of the news media, while not being overly technical. For the Christian, It is good to know what is happening on the cutting-edge of science and how it applies to Christianity.

Rating:

Rich Deem

Introduction

Fazale Rana,
Reasons To Believe's biochemist scholar, has written a timely book, Creating Life in the Lab, that examines human attempts to create
artificial life forms in the laboratory. With
Craig Venter's announcement of having created an artificial bacterium, news
sources have been busy speculating what is next.

Overview

Two approaches have been taken toward creating life in the lab. The
bottom-up strategy has attempted to identify biochemical pathways and
self-replicating molecules that could have been involved in the formation of
the first life form. The top-down strategy has attempted to identify minimal
requirements for life and then synthesize the DNA required to produce that
life.

Top-down

Venter's group, Synthetic Genomics, Inc., set out a strategy to produce the
world's first synthetic organism using a top-down approach using the "simple"
bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium. Synthetic Genomics "knocked-out"
individual genes to determine what genes were required for the organism to grow
and reproduce. They determined that 380 of the 480 genes were essential. They
synthesized pieces of the DNA, chemically linked the pieces together, then used
the cellular machinery of yeasts to link the larger pieces together. Then came
the hard part - getting the DNA into a cell. Actually, that process could have
been much more difficult. Synthetic Genomics specifically chose a bacterium that
doesn't have a cell wall. Nearly all bacteria are surrounded by a thick cell
wall that protects the bacteria from damage. However, certain intracellular
parasites, like Mycoplasma genitalium, lack a cell wall, which
facilitates their intracellular lifestyle. However, even with the lack of a cell
wall, initial attempts to transplant the foreign DNA into related Mycoplasma
species failed. It turned out that these bacteria, like most other bacteria,
contain endonucleases to protect the host from foreign DNA. Venter's team had to
eliminate those genes from the host cell and methylate the transplanted DNA to
protect it from digestion. They also used a "trick" to make the foreign DNA take
over the cell. Synthetic Genomics added antibiotic resistance (tetracycline) to
the foreign DNA, then grew the transplanted cells in the antibiotic. Therefore,
only antibiotic resistant cells (the ones with the foreign DNA) would grow.
Therefore, the original DNA was eventually eliminated, resulting in the new
bacterium, named Mycoplasma laboratorium.

Bottom-up

The other approach to creating life in the lab involves the bottom-up
strategy. This approach is exemplified by the work of origin of life researcher
Jack Szostak. Szostak's research has attempted to create protocells through the
design of membrane-bounded vesicles followed by the incorporation of nucleic
acids and metabolic components. The approach is decidedly more difficult and
requires much more intelligent design than the top-down strategy. Instead of
showing that life can arise without direction, the work shows that such an
approach requires much planning and significant trial and error to get the right
conditions, although researchers are still far from creating a novel life form.

Artificial enzymes

Another interesting section of Creating Life in the Lab is one on
artificial enzymes. Biological enzymes catalyze chemical reactions, often
increasing the spontaneous reaction rate by a billion times or more.
Scientists have set out to produce artificial enzymes that catalyze chemical
reactions not used in biological organisms. Comparing the structure of
biological enzymes, scientists used super-computers to calculate the
sequences of amino acids in their enzymes that might catalyze the reaction
they were interested in. After testing dozens of candidates,, the best ones
were chosen and subjected to "in vitro evolution," which increased the
reaction rate up to 200-fold. Despite all this "intelligent design," the
artificial enzymes were 10,000 to 1,000,000,000 times less efficient than
their biological counterparts. Dr. Rana asks the question, "is it reasonable
to think that undirected evolutionary processes routinely accomplished this
task?"

Origin of life

The last half of of Creating Life in the Lab (chapters 7-13) examine our knowledge
of possible origin of life scenarios and problems. Although covered in more
detail in Dr. Rana's Origins of Life (published in 2004), these chapters update
the latest studies that have attempted find a naturalistic explanation for
the origin of life. These chapters include discussions of major origin of
life models, including replicator first and metabolism first hypotheses.
Numerous problems are discussed, including homochirality and the origin of
biological membranes. Are scientists closer to a naturalistic explanation
for life's origin? You will have to read the book to find out!

Epilogue, Appendix

The epilogue ties everything together, along with Dr. Rana's predictions
about what the future will hold in artificial life forms and origin of life
research. How should a Christian react to such studies? Creating Life in the Lab
contains an appendix, which is a brief introduction to biochemistry and how
cells function. If you have little background on the subject, you might want
to start by reading the appendix so that the rest of the book makes
more sense.

Conclusion

Creating Life in the Lab is a contemporary examination of how
scientists are attempting to create life in the lab. The book is a great
summary of the current research in the field. It cuts through the
sensationalism of the news media, while not being overly technical. It
is less technical than Dr. Rana's
The Cell's Design, but still requires some technical interest in
biology/biochemistry for full appreciation. In a world dominated by
science and technology, it is good for Christians to know what is
happening on the cutting-edge of science and how it applies to
Christianity.

Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off - Fuz Rana (a biochemist) and Hugh Ross (an astrophysicist)
have teamed up to write the
definitive analysis of the origin of life. The book examines the origins of life from the
perspectives of chemistry, biochemistry, astronomy, and the Bible. A biblical
creation model is presented along side the naturalistic models to help the
reader decide which one fits the data better. This is an excellent book to give
to your unbelieving friends, since it presents a testable creation model that is
clearly superior to any naturalistic model.

Creating Life in the Lab
Welcome to the "Creating Life in the Lab" virtual book tour. Keep up with the news on my latest book via radio interviews, informative book reviews, speaking tour updates, and more.

05/03/2011 04:36 PMRecap of Virginia and DC trip
The beginning of April found me traveling for more of the Creating Life in the Lab book tour. Some highlights include: Speaking at Georgetown School of Medicine, John Hopkins University, and University of Maryland about Creating Life in the Lab An afternoon spent at the Christian Broadcasting Network headquarters in Virginia Beach to video tape […] ()

04/27/2011 06:38 PMThree Days Left!
It’s important that I remind you that there’s only three days left to guarantee your cabin on RTB’s Alaska Cruise Conference this summer, July 30–August 6. The theme of our cruise is Future Faith Challenges. I’ll be speaking about Common Descent or Common Design? and, in a breakout session, on Creating Life in the Lab. […] ()

03/30/2011 04:25 PMThe Blueprint for an Artificial Cell
It isn’t such a good idea to try to build a house without a set of blueprints to guide the construction. The same goes for building cells. That’s why a team of synthetic biologists from Rockefeller University recently published the blueprint for the artificial cell project, a research program aiming to design a synthetic cell […] ()

03/23/2011 12:57 PMSpeaking Tour Recap
March 15: Had a great time in Winnipeg taping programs for It’s a New Day. They will air, I am told, in the fall (I’ll keep you posted on that). We taped four programs, two on The Cell’s Design and two on Creating Life in the Lab. Here are some shots of me on the […] ()

03/14/2011 11:37 AMReview by Dr. Jay L. Wile
Nuclear chemist Dr. Jay L. Wile posted a thorough review of Creating Life in the Lab on his blog, Proslogion (named for a work by Anselm of Canterbury; its English title is Discourse on the Existence of God). ()

03/10/2011 05:16 PMHeaded to Winnipeg
Headed to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to tape television interviews with It’s A New Day. We’ll be discussing Creating Life in the Lab and The Cell’s Design. (I’ll post the air dates later this spring.) And then it’s off to Illinois for a speaking tour. ()

03/09/2011 11:20 AMInterview on The Line of Fire
Yesterday I talked about Creating Life in the Lab with Dr. Michael Brown on The Line of Fire. Listen to the interview at lineoffireradio.com. ()

03/07/2011 06:26 PMTwo-Hour Interview with Greg Koukl
Had a great time discussing Creating Life in the Lab with apologist Greg Koukl during the last two hours on the Stand to Reason podcast. Listen to the interview here.audio/mpeg (39.5 MBytes)

03/02/2011 12:37 PMAutomated Synthesis of Sugars Sweetens the Case for Intelligent Design
When it comes to sugars, most people want to find ways to break them down. But there are a few scientists who want to figure out ways to put these compounds together. Recently, researchers took this desire to the extreme by devising machines that synthesize sugars.1 The work represents an important milestone for scientists studying […] ()

02/25/2011 01:45 PMUpcoming Speaking Tour in Illinois
I’ll be speaking on Creating Life in the Lab at these events in March. March 16: Deerfield, IL, Trinity International University* March 17: Wheaton, IL, Wheaton College* March 18: South Barrington, IL, Willow Creek Community Church For event details, visit reasons.org/events. *These events are not sponsored by Trinity International University or Wheaton College. ()